Blood Bond
by thistledot
Summary: Beautiful pureblood children caught in a quandary. A story that attempts to catch each in the eyes of the other. Rido X Juri X Haruka.


Rido x Juri x Haruka

A/N: This is a rough attempt to elaborate on the whole complicated (is it not?) Rido x Juri x Haruka affair. A/U.

Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Knight and I sure envy Matsuri Hino :P

--

Chapter 1

The prattle that filled the circular hall gradually diminished. Chests fell to the floor and eyes rose up to follow the pair as they ceremoniously sauntered down the stairs and onto the center stage.

He stood on the right, she, on the left. His small hand clutched hers.

A studded phthalo green chiffon ribbon billowed obtrusively from the side of her waist. It spilled carelessly onto the floor and partially concealed his right foot. Small matching phthalo green buttons adorned his crisp ivory shirt. Their tiny unmarred bodies unguardedly brimmed with health. Overall, they stirred in their audience gratuitous feelings of ephemeral youth, beauty, and innocence.

To begin the show, he led her by the hand towards the parlor grand piano beside them and from behind her, by her shoulders, propped her onto the bench. He held both her hands and gently positioned her fingers onto the piano keys. Their choreography delighted their watchers.

For his part, he took the violin and bow lying right beside her on the bench. They struck a pose. Tonight, they were going to dazzle their subjects with a duet.

In another place, in another time, the tip of a needle meets the vinyl surface of a spinning record. Another version of the Meditation of Thäis plays on a humble turntable.

--

Rido is 12 years old. Juri is two years younger.

It has been three days since she withdrew from formal classes. It hasn't been the same without her. Lessons were now administered in a quicker pace and there was no one to whom he could occasionally gloat and affirm his academic superiority.

Furthermore, there was no time for him to relax. It was the usual practice that for writing lessons, the teacher would exit the premises and leave the day's lessons in his hands. He would pull the blindfold from her eyes, shove a pen and paper before her, and begin barking out instructions on what to write. While she took her time, he leisurely spent his reading books on other less morose topics. If he felt especially compassionate that day, he would pay careful attention to his first student and teach her something substantial.

Unable to bear the sudden change in routine, he shut his book close and against his teacher's suggestions, went running straight back to his room to see her. She was on her side, half-covered by the bed sheet, her back facing the doorway.

"Are you not well yet?"

She gave no answer. He surmised that she was, in fact, in deep slumber, as she never failed to reply whenever he asked her questions. To test his theory, he boorishly plopped onto her bed and shook her exposed arm once or twice. Her eyes remained closed.

Glaring at her back, he teetered between anger and embarrassment. _The audacity to ignore him!_

"Stupid girl! You shouldn't have just listened to me!" He shook her arm once more.

Recently, during recess, she jumped off a balcony that hung from a considerable height from the ground. She landed (rather, she crashed), legs folded like paper, bones broken, and bloodied on a garden below.

This was because he told her that he was bored out of his wits and carelessly suggested that he wanted to watch her "fly" from the balcony ledge. He was quick to assure her that all of _their_ kind could do it, that the ability came supernaturally in mid-air, and that he himself once achieved the feat. So she jumped.

"You liar." She murmured.

He stood up from the bed motionless.

Years ago he would have been immediately screaming and pulling the sheets under her, but on this moment, he felt a surge of multiple levels of competing emotions threatening to burst out from his chest - anger, frustration, astonishment, and guilt.

_He was feeling sorry? _

Since when was he at fault?! And since when were they actually entitled to some form of trust between them?

Rido is 7 years old.

He sat on the settee and to his irritation, felt something jab his bottom. It was an irregularly shaped parcel double the length of his open palm protruding from the crevice between cushions. The fancy wrapping proved to be shabbily constructed under the force of his weight. Torn and undone, the gift revealed itself as a young freesia solidified within a tear shaped resin. In his hand, its exposed tip glistened weakly against the dim light of a nearby lamp stand.

Without a second thought, he flung it into the air. It rolled some several steps from the settee before hitting the leg of a table.

There were plenty of other items of interest scattered around him - sitting with him or huddling close to his feet. Most catered to his prodigious intellect - books on governance and philosophy - the "vampiric" kind. Some were inclined to his musical talent – thick instruction manuals and newly handcrafted violins. A rare few appealed to his vanity (because he was undeniably a beautiful child) - mirrors, combs, and sets of princely clothes.

There were other gifts worth noting (these did not make it into this room) which _literally_ suited to his tastes - consumables from a tight circle of witnesses to his recent "initiation".

He sat once again on the settee. The urge to send everything flying seized him, but the door creaking open interrupted him.

"Now go on. Be a good girl and meet the young master." A female voice said.

Her head bobbed as a hand behind her pushed her forward. She began to walk towards the settee.

Indignant, he had in mind to throw a din for sending him visitors when he had expressly asked that no one disturb him, but the bright carmine ribbon around her neck caused him to raise an eyebrow.

_What is this?_

Of course! She _was also_ a gift - a rather quaint and modest one in a slightly tattered winsor blue bed dress. Whoever sent her obviously glossed over the lack of proper presentation. Save for the ribbon chicly sauced around her neck (which was now increasingly inviting), she was not much to look at. But it was not a serious matter, her appearance, after all, would not come into play in the critical moment.

She initially appeared calm, but the gradual uncertainty of her steps betrayed her. Before long, her walk reduced into aimless dawdling.

He was becoming impatient. His blindfolded gift had just gone towards a new direction. Since she was already in reach, he lunged forward and grasped her by the shoulders. By the thick mane from the nape of her neck, he yanked her head down onto his right lap.

She cried.

As he prepared for a one-time big-time bite, that almost-in-your-mouth smell filled his nostrils. Admittedly, he was in a moment of euphoric gluttony. But this was one meal he wasn't having.

_This...blood?!_

He jerked his head backwards and covered his nose with both hands. _Her blood was so pungent! _

He pushed her head from his lap. She half-rolled on the floor once and like a freed prey, sprung into life, her feet running wildly, blindly, stomping on and slipping into paper, ribbons, synthetic foliage, flattened lids and boxes. She was frantic. The servant, who stood behind the door, watching, grabbed her and she fell headfirst against her lap. She clung around her legs for dear life, short of breath, lost for tears.

"That's right. This one is different. This one's not for you to eat." The servant muttered.

--

The young violin virtuosi stole the show with his charismatic interpretation, but the pianist behind his shadow, though emotionless, swayed the listeners with the blind but elegant dexterity of her fingers.

In general, their audience was pleased. The low-class your-average vampires affirmed their peachy image of the royals as they now saw it: exquisite, mysterious, lovely, etcetera. The nobles nodded with relief that the offspring of their immediate masters were meeting minimum requirements - even _their_ own children performed duets. The ex-human vampires - there were none invited. And the Level-E vampires, if they were still in the right mind to think _or not_, would have exactly one opinion of them: delicious. But not one dared to come in disguise.

For the rest of the purebloods, it was a different story. On the outside, they put on a convincing show of great admiration, but inside, they were dark green and dying with envy. In their opinion, it should have been _their_ son playing the violin, _their_ daughter playing the piano, _their_ clan leading _their_ race. Yet on the other hand, they sheepishly acknowledged that the Kurans, generations after generations, have proven themselves competent - using blood, force, and guile - to keep the friendly neighborhood Hunters at bay.

Times were changing. Their enemies had evolved and become as stubborn, as ruthless and as bloodthirsty as they are. A fresh batch of Hunters was recently seemingly executing orders for "random" pureblood assassinations. Tonight was a celebration of a pricey truce that the royals paid for.

--

Rido is 19 years old.

"What is it?"

He hated it when he was disturbed while he was reading.

"The Shirabukis are asking if you could kindly reconsider their request for an audience with the young master." A voice replied from behind the door.

"Oh?" He turned back to his book. "Let them wait."

A week ago, they paid the royals a visit for the sole purpose of feigning affinity. While the elders exchanged views on current events in the main hall on the ground floor, a brash Shirabuki son snuck into her room on the third floor. The lad sustained two negligible injuries - a three-inch double parallel cut on the right temple stretching down to the corner of his lips made by her fangs (her hands were for covering her eyes) and an ugly cut on the left side of the nape of his neck stabbed by the furniture he crashed into when the young master thrashed him about.

A few days after, the lad sustained a major injury that nearly cost him his immortal life - a good, clean shot from a bloody rose near his heart from the back. That was enough to send the Shirabukis running after the royals' good graces.

After the event, he considered asking her to move back into his room, but thinking that it probably wouldn't happen again, he changed his mind. In any case, he was also afraid to appear vulnerable (he missed her company?) or that he was taking advantage of the circumstances.

That morning, he peeked into her room and caught sight of her clutching her neck as she rested. Apparently, in the frenzy of her kicking, his hands clutching hers from her face, her muffled shrieking, and their rolling about on the floor, the Shirabuki bastard managed to get a gulp's worth of her blood.

She felt his weight slightly pressing down her bed. The last thing she remembered before losing trail of her thoughts was feeling him gently lift the hair behind her neck.

She placed her palm on her neck and felt something damp.

"See? That wasn't so bad, was it? There's a way to do it without causing too much pain."

She turned to look up at him - her face mildly shocked - his face with an unexplainable grin - and then to her bloodstained palm. She didn't even feel the _bite_. Or she blanked out completely?

She drifted to sleep a few minutes later.

Rido is 14 years old.

His room is purposefully divided in half. The right side, the side where the doorway stood, was his territory. The left side, the side enclosed by walls, was hers. They had identical beds, differing only in the design of bed sheets. There were also two short lamp stands, each standing beside their beds. Before their beds stood a dresser and a wardrobe closet large enough for both of them to share. The dresser stood on his side, the closet, on hers.

She was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at herself on the mirror of the dresser. He sat on her right side, inserting himself within the frames of the reflection before them.

"You -- are female. Do you see the differences between our bed sheets? Mine is plain, yours has flowers?"

She silently nodded in agreement. He looked around the room for a more precise analogy, but failed to find anything appropriate at the moment.

"You know the servant who usually helps you dress? She is also female. Someday, you're going to grow up and be like her."

She nodded thoughtfully and suddenly recalled that the servant he was referring to pleasantly reeked of peaches.

He took some clothes from their closet, opened the door, and stood behind it for sometime.

"Now, don't follow me into the bathroom anymore."

She nodded, a bit teary-eyed.

--

Taking her right hand resting on her lap, Rido led Juri off the piano seat. She now stood on the right, he, on the left. He bowed first and after lightly squeezing Juri's fingers, she followed suit. Uproar soon ensued.

The noise is momentarily hushed at the sight of her blindfold coming undone while her head remained tilted forward. She caught it with both hands against her eyes and tied it back.

--

Man, anybody who has written anything has to agree with me that it is sooooo hard to write!! I'm glad I was able to finish the first chapter. Please review and help me improve it :)

BTW, Meditation of Thais is by Jules Massenet from his opera Thais. I like the renditions of Joshua Bell and the incredible team of Dominique and Valerie Kim from whom I drew inspiration for the duet part.

I'll be working soon on the next chapter! Fighting!! (collapses)


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